Manshera: Longhaired gunmen burst into the white stone building and killed four charity workers helping earthquake victims, then wrecked the office with grenades and set it on fire. Police came, but did not intervene. In a tactic reminiscent of
The February 25 attack on employees of Plan International, a British-based charity that focuses on helping children, was the worst in a series of threats and assaults on aid workers in the northern mountains where Taliban-style militants have expanded their reach in the past year. Nearly a month later, menacing letters are still being sent to aid organisations. Although all four victims in Mansehra were Pakistani men, extremists despise the aid groups because they employ women and work for womenÂ’s rights.
Local officials in Mansehra, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said letters from extremists distributed March 13 and 14 also warned schools to make sure girls are covered from head to toe and to avoid coeducation. Police accuse a local militant, Mohiuddin Shakir, who goes by the alias Mujahid, of masterminding the attack last month on the aid office in Mansehra. He has not been arrested. Shakir, a former member of an Al Qaeda-linked group, has criminal charges against him in Pakistan dating back to 2002, including for murder, according to police records obtained by The Associated Press. Shakir now leads a militant group called Lashkar-e-Ababeel. Last summer, Shakir wrote a letter to newspapers warning international aid groups about hiring women and warning women to wear an all-encompassing veil.
Yet Abdul Ershad, an officer investigating the attack, said that as recently as late 2007, Shakir had a working arrangement with police in his hometown of Phulra not far from Mansehra. To advance his agenda, he would tell police about residents involved in “un-Islamic” activities - like men selling pornographic videos and socialising with women - and police would arrest them, Ershad said. Brig Waqas Iqbal Raja, the chief security official for the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency, acknowledged a growing presence of extremists in the quake zone, including some militants displaced by an army offensive against supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric in neighboring Swat district.
He could not explain why Shakir was still at large. Distrustful residents did not alert police when six or seven militants with long hair and their faces hidden behind scarves descended in broad daylight on the Plan International compound. The militants ordered the security guard to leave. Sajjad Mahmood, a clerk working next door, said police arrived after 30 minutes and just stood outside the gate while the assailants were inside. When the gunmen emerged, police did not try to stop them, he said. “It was a real act of brutality and you feel very worried, and still there is no real arrangements from the police for security,” said Aneela Tobassam, a Pakistani worker for US-based Mercy Corps who provides vocational training to women. Even inside her office, Tobassam, an ethnic Pashtun, wears a large shawl covering her head. “I don’t feel safe outside right now, but I won’t leave. I will stay here and I will do my work even if for now it is inside the office,” she said.
There was a bombing outside the office of a local charity, Strengthening Participatory Organisation, which wounded eight people. Attackers also sprayed the compound of CARE International with automatic gunfire, but no one was hurt.
The quake-hit region has long been a haven for militant groups allegedly linked to the Pakistani military and intelligence service. The Jamaatud Dawa, a successor to the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, was among the first to help quake victims after the disaster and worked closely with the Pakistan military. It and banned groups like Harakatul Mujahedeen set up medical camps alongside an extensive, and widely welcomed, international relief effort.
Graham Strong, country director for US-based World Vision, which heads an umbrella group of 20 international aid organisations operating in Pakistan, voiced concern that aid workers here will face the same problem as in Afghanistan. “I hope we are not going down the same road here,” Strong said in Islamabad. “We are generally concerned that things might be changing.”